Are You An Energy-Taker or an Energy-Maker

High school macroeconomics taught me that a company can either be a “price-taker” or a “price-maker.”

The best companies are price-makers.

Apple. Disney. Amazon Prime. Spotify. Uber. Costco. NVIDIA.

Others are price-takers.

They watch their competitors and reduce their prices by a nickel. They do this until they get to zero.

The same concept works with your energy.

Are you an energy-taker or an energy-maker?

You can either add energy to a room, or you can match everyone else’s.

Every room has an energy-maker.

It’s the person that people naturally gravitate towards.

If you speak to a negative person, it’s easy to match their level and take their energy.

Instead, if you continuously beam with positive energy, whoever you speak to will feel awkward if they aren’t positive too, at least to some extent.

You are the energy-maker.

You can only provide value when you make energy.

Like two tectonic plates pushing up to create a mountain.

As Dale Carnegie wrote, “be interested in other people to get them interested in you”.

If someone likes you, it’s easy to like them too.

The key is this: don’t wait for someone to like you.

Show that you like them first.

• If you invite others to events, you will get invitations yourself.
• When you speak clearly and calmly in a room during a crisis, the panic in the room dissipates.
• If you respect others’ time, others will respect yours.

You are the energy-maker.

Newton’s Third Law of Physics states the following: “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.”

You create the action, rather than react to the action.

It works the other way too.

• If you hate everyone, you assume everyone hates you too.
• When you’re stingy, don’t give to charity, or buy cheap things, less money comes back to you.
• If you never help others, you will be scared to ask others for help.
• If you never give others compliments, you won’t receive them either.

If you act from a place of abundance, others will too.

Energy-taking is a default state of being. It’s high entropy.

As Jeff Bezos said in his excellent final shareholder letter as CEO of Amazon,

“To all of you: be kind, be original, create more than you consume, and never, never, never let the universe smooth you into your surroundings.”

Resist entropy.

It’s difficult, it will take a while, and others will resist.

But if you do it long enough, you’ll see that this works. Then, you won’t go back.

Give, and be open to receive.

That way, the pie is bigger for everyone. The mountain keeps getting taller.

Be an energy-maker not an energy-taker.

-Armaan